1. First RPG played this year: grinding old Tunnels & Trolls solos, levelling a new Elf Rogue ("really wow Mark did he also wear black and have long hair? Ever consider playing against type?") for use in other solos, but got off-track. Where's that notebook?
2. First RPG run this year: Basic Fantasy back in February. BFRPG's too Candyland for my hardcore ass, much as I respect their process. PUG player group were also meh discord randos. Help LFG.
Or if 2 is first GM for me, this college nerd David babysat me when I was 8, taught me D&D with Holmes & Monster Manual. He wasn't very good, had the map out in the open, just treated it as a boardgame. 2 of my 4 starting characters (!) died, the other 2 I've played for decades since.
Years later I talked to him again, and he'd FOUND JAYZUS (was he lost?) and renounced D&D and was so worried I was into Satanism, which to be fair I was. Jesus sucks, Satan's RPGs rule.
3. First RPG bought this year: Paid $0.00 for Cairn, and it's barely worth that. It's literally a combat system, spell list, very minimal monster list, no setting, no *game* procedures or loop. Sorry, Yochai, but no. Item tokens may be of some use playing Knave (which has everything).
First RPG paid for: Cyberpunk RED. It's relentlessly mediocre/adequate, like Mike realized what a fuckup Gen, 3.0, etc. were, and just made a CP2020+25 years. Stagnant world & design.
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4. Most RECENT game bought. Depends on what you mean.
Ironsworn: Delve is a supplement. Knave 2E hasn't shipped yet, tho I have the beta PDF. Swords & Wizardry Complete Revised, I guess? Depending on timestamp of kickstarter close vs shopping, RoleMaster Unified Core Law.
Mostly I've been buying modules & weirdo sourcebooks instead of new games, which obviously I don't need.
5. OLDEST game you've played.
Technically it's a tie, Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (ed. Eric J. Holmes) (1977), and Tunnels & Trolls 4th Ed (1977).
Most often I use later editions or remakes of both. Holmes is difficult to use as-is for longer games, you need at least OD&D books or Meepo's Companion to extend it beyond 3rd-Level. T&T 4E is a perfectly serviceable game as-is, I prefer or at least put it on par with later ones.
6. Favourite[sic] game you NEVER get to play.
Well, RoleMaster's the obvious candidate, but every new edition/decade I can usually get a group together a while.
Whispering Vault, even explaining the concept makes most players back away slowly and call police. Played it for a few years in '00s.
Underground is great game/setting, but very hard to convince players that homeless superhero veterans on the streets of shitty "future" (now past) 2021 L.A. is gonna be fun.
7. SMARTEST RPG you've played.
HERO is a min-max math optimization game, on top of Champions being a fairly complex world of many factions rather than just one hero/villain group.
Tri-Tac's games, Fringeworthy has a complex game, vastly more than anything else I've ever played, requires a lot of background knowledge of science & technology, and a really open-ended alternate realities setting. Later easy games like Beach Bunny Bimbos With Blasters are so much better.
What I don't count as "smart" are very freeform things. I can half-ass anything with my Six Word RPG!
Describe characters. Roll dice. Gamemaster decides.
Non-technical settings don't require much smarts, just some memory of folklore and how you tell stories. Nobody's gonna be upset about a dragon's mass/volume ratio, and "it's magic" is a fine answer.
OMG the gun guy whining in my old Deadlands game. I'd just "oh really" at him for half an hour and he never got the clue.
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8. Favourite[sic] CHARACTER
First and always closest to my heart is Grecal the Grey Wizard. Rolled up in my first D&D session, 15 INT & DEX, average stats otherwise. More of a stab-first, dart-throwing, puzzle-solver, 1/day spell is last resort. Survived the first dungeon with his buddy Starkad Giant-Kin, 2 others died and left in that dark hole. Levelled him for years, switched to Illusionist. Last seen leading a Mages' Guild after a dragon-regicide went bad.
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But a close second is Kane (very subtle naming), Changeling (doppelganger) Diabolist (symbol writing mage) in Palladium Fantasy. Sole non-demonic party survivor of the Old Ones Complex, who fucking runs that as a starter adventure‽ After some levels switched to Assassin. Not so much evil as, well, Aberrant but big-picture "how do I make the world suck less for myself & my friends? MURDER."
I have parallel-world magic-assassin bastards in all sorts of games.
9. Favourite[sic] DICE
Sides? 6. I love d6-only games (Tunnels & Trolls, Traveller, etc.), I think every other die type is either a mistake (polyhedrals) or an abomination (those 10-sided things). "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
Manufacturer: GameScience®! I have many sets including polyhedrals. They're so choice, if you have the means, I highly recommend them.
Attached: 3 images Got my clone Holmes dice set in. Good mix of colors & styles, they roll better than Chessex except the marbled ones are shittier (and off sequence! See that back d8‽) Keeping the bottom 2 of each color in my tray. Alas, no orange, pink, or d20 numbered 0-9 (I don't use 10-sided dice). Brown dice are hilariously ugly, gonna use the POOP DIE for really bad shit, that comes up 1 you fall in the latrine. Brand was "Yellow Mountain Imports", just some drop-ship from China. #rpg #dnd #dice
10 Favourite[sic—I will never get tired of this gag] tie-in FICTION.
Counting down:
4. Knight of the Black Rose.
3. Shadowrun: Into the Shadows. Good anthology of cyberpunk + fantasy. The Street finds its own uses for magic.
2. TORG: Storm Knights trilogy, by Bill Slavicsek. "Never life, never death".
1. Dark Conspiracy: Fiddleback trilogy. Lovecraftian horror from Mike Stackpole; often more pulp HPL homage than you expect.
11. WEIRDEST game you've played.
HMM. Weirdest games are ones I haven't played; we made chars and did a little intro in Mechanical Dream, which is the weirdest game I've ever read. But it was <2 hours total time.
Skyrealms of Journe is weird, but not *that* weird, it's basically Metamorphosis Alpha on a planet.
I played and ran a lot of Kult, which gets very weird, psychosexual, kinky, as well as splatter-horror. 1st Ed only, 2nd is unreadable, 3rd is fucking PBTA.
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12. Old game you STILL play.
I almost exclusively play old games (or clones), they're always better! Tunnels & Trolls (pref 4E, some 5E, Deluxe), OD&D (Holmes or Swords & Wizardry), Call of Cthulhu (can't stand 6E+, got the lovely 2E reprint box), Traveller (played Trav Book until recent switch to Cepheus). I'd play Stormbringer 1E, but OpenQuest 2E or my own post-Mongoose d100 mechanics are fine.
What do I even play from this benighted Millennium?
I've been thinking about this while I do other stuff, and I can't think of any new or updated RPG that's better than the previous edition since 2000.
Bigger, fatter, sure. Often better organized & edited, computers are a little better than typewriters and literal scissors cut & glue paste.
But I mean actually more fun, more interesting. And I think of no examples.
Zweihänder's a worse WHFRP 1E, it was just *in print*. D&D 3-5E are comically worse. GURPS is a worse Fantasy Trip.
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I'm not sure how to mathematically define "fun" and "interesting", but "time from start of chargen to an exciting, unexpected death" might be a good first measure.
OG Trav can kill you in chargen! And on landing on your first planet or station. Mongoose Trav 2E with all the stuff looks like it'll take hours to even get your guy into trouble. I use Cepheus because it has no lore built in, but it's fatter & slower than 1977 (so C Lite might be an exception?)
I've thought of one possible: Advanced Fighting Fantasy (2011) and Troika! (2015) are both probably better than Dungeoneer (1989).
Not 100%, and in fact the original Fighting Fantasy RPG (1984) is maybe even better. AFF's combat is slower and more ungainly with the damage tables. Dungeoneer's spell list is shorter, but you can just steal Sorcery and gamebook spells, or write your own.
Troika's game system is sub-gamebook quality, but it's supported by so much better chargen & implicit setting.
13. Most memorable character DEMISE.
Some perfect GM kills:
I ran GDQ, in Hall of the Fire Giant King, they'd made it to the bottom floor, the river of lava, nobody had died. An angry Fire Giant on their trail, the [SPOILER MAJOR ENEMY] were ahead, they charge across the bridge, giant comes up behind, hits rear guard hard, yeets him right into the lava. 9 levels gone!
Another dungeon, a chute goes down to darkness. PC jumps in. At the bottom is a cell full of ghouls.
14. Favourite[sic] CONVENTION purchase.
Most of my con game purchases have been meh, ephemeral things. Tunnels & Trolls 7E in a tin! Really awful! Nobody liked it!
But I bought my GameScience® dice from Lou Zocchi every time, and I love those.
15. Favourite[sic] Con MODULE/ONE-SHOT
Way back when I was playtesting/kibitzing for the Weapons of the Gods RPG, I made a trivial
Fight in the Noodle House
test adventure, you meet the bad guy you've been chasing getting soup, fight starts. Just what it sounds like, with a table of random events in the fight, passerby who'd get involved, people throwing crockery & hot noodles at you, falling beams once you cause damage, just a lot of chaos. Every run was different.
16. Game you WISH you owned.
I have most of my ideal games, the good ones still in print, or reprints, others PDF only. If you have Tunnels & Trolls, Holmes, Call of Cthulhu, and some kind of Traveller, what else do you need in life? Some more Fighting Fantasy would be good.
Non-RPG, I'd murder a dude to have an original Dark Tower in working condition. I have Kovalic's Dork Tower, which is like 50% of it but cheesy. I hate the iPhone-app-controlled new one.
17. FUNNIEST game you've played.
Just too obvious: Paranoia, 1st Ed. Taking serious, depressing, dystopian literature and movies, and the Cold War which was very likely to kill us ANY DAY NOW in 1984, and then throwing in disposable clones, a psychotic computer, mutants, secret societies, treachery, military incompetence, and High Programmers treating it as a game, is THE JOKE.
2nd ed's OK but gets goofy, later editions suck algae cakes.
18. Favourite[sic] game SYSTEM.
Game Designer Syndrome means being unsatisfied with anything.
My Six Word RPG! is objectively perfect:
Describe characters. Roll dice. Gamemaster decides.
And yet I write & play new ones all the time.
I like D100 (BRP minus Chaosium) a lot, but I hate 10-sided dice, and most instances are an inelegant mix of all kinds of dice, weird procedures.
Tunnels & Trolls is sweet, saving throws are awesome. Combat's mechanically vague.
🧵
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HERO is the most logically consistent system. But it is tedious to make characters in.
RoleMaster is sweet, but too hard for casual players, and the infinite house/optional rules mess tells us it's not perfect.
I like Eden's Unisystem enormously, but modern combat in it is ridiculous, every power system is a whole new incoherent set of mechanics.
So my own games are a D100 crunchy (but not too heavy) and a 2d6 very rules lite, or my 3d6 super casual game (which Six Word RPG does better).
19. Favourite[sic] PUBLISHED adventure.
GW1 Legion of Gold. The single best hexcrawl with antagonists doing stuff on it, that's ever been written.
City of Terrors. Best T&T solo, Gull is my favorite city.
Isle of the Unknown. Similar thing, hexcrawl with overarching mysteries.
X2 Castle Amber. Fantastic mix of Zelazny, Clark Ashton Smith, Edgar Allan Poe references. Needs some rewriting.
Vog Mur.
Tegel Manor.
A1-4 Scourge of the Slavelords.
Deep Carbon Observatory.
20. Will still play in TWENTY years time…
Well, T&T is going thru dying/rebirth pains as Monsters! Monsters!, but hopefully it'll be another 20-year game?
Probably RoleMaster Unified will be replaced with RM Unrevised in 2030s, RM Unforgiven in 2040s, so I'll get in my once-per-decade campaign of each.
I should be done with my D100 and pulp games by then, so maybe I'll still be playing them! My attention span for my old games tends to be only a decade at most.
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21. Favourite[sic] LICENSED RPG.
Well how licensed? Call of Cthulhu has a license from the legally invalid Arkham House (scumbag Derleth stole posthumous HPL from his actual executor, then shat out elemental magic fairy stories). But it's a license!
GURPS The Prisoner, it's amazing it exists. Somewhat pointless, but I have played a few sessions of it!
The *weirdest* is also GURPS, Casey & Andy, an obscure mediocre webcomic with a time travel & Satan setting.
22. Best SECONDHAND RPG purchase.
Palladium Books' Compendium of Weapons, Armour[sic] & Castles. I had a couple of the proto-versions of this new long ago, but the collected version is fantastic. If you do any kind of fantasy gaming, you want this book.
23. COOLEST looking RPG product/book.
Skyrealms of Jorune. Cool covers & art, great layout in 2E & 3E. 1E is a typewriter-layout Metamorphosis Alpha hack. 4E was a failure. Those Dragon magazine ads in 1984 could not have been better placed to tempt you to buy.
Awesome SF/F setting, system's fine, it's crunchy by modern standards but not for the time. Really interesting duelling combat, Isho (magic/mutations) is a lot more limited.
24. COMPLEX/SIMPLE RPG you play.
Kinda repeating myself here. RoleMaster for complex.
Tunnels & Trolls, Fighting Fantasy are simple-ish, but: My little one-shots are among the simplest, Portal Bandits maybe the clearest statement of my philosophy (and I've since ditched the d20):
https://mdhughes.tech/rpg/
I've run it several times now, and weird stuff happens. Cairo, in the future! Steal a sarcophagus and take it (minus gold) back to Pharaoh times for another reward!
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@mdhughes I had no idea that such a thing as GURPS The Prisoner existed.
That is my wife's favorite TV show, so it's off to eBay for me. Thanks for the heads up!
@mdhughes i have Skyrealms of Jorune and every year we say with a friend that this time we'll definitely play it but never happens.
Read Kult in the mid-90s as a teenager and was very very confused. I would have probably enjoyed it a little older, but by then I was playing world of darkness stuff in my edgy phase
@Soloflow It is actually going into one of my games, Corporate Jungle (and is also used in an Atari BASIC mini-game). Which I don't have a license decided on yet since the OGL fiasco; so after that gets released, see what the license I choose is.
Of course you can make your own, just don't loot & pillage mine yet!
@Soloflow Yeah, ORC won't work for me, it's a "give away all your mechanics and anything else we think is mechanics", much less controllable than OGL was.
More likely I'll make an SRD with CC-BY-SA. There's two different "ELF" licenses in development, I'm considering those. But it'll be a while before I make a hard decision.
@dssstrkl If it's not a Platonic solid, it's CRAP! (as Mike Myers says)
I use 2d20 and read ones digits for d100, as we did in the Elden Times.
My original Holmes box had chits, and a coupon for the 5 Platonic dice. Gamma World came with 5 more Platonic dice. Not all perfect or hard, but adequate. I soon got a GameScience® d20 with + - signs! Then TSR shipped d10 in Star Frontiers and Dragon Dice (not the dice game) and they were just trash, soapy nothings. I've held a grudge for 40 years.
@mdhughes I grew up on Palladium, so lots of d10 usage, in addition to the standard d6 and d20s, along with the occasional d4 🤮
One of my friends had a d100, but we couldn’t use it because apparently none of our houses were level enough for consistent good rolls
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